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“But it wasn’t enough,” Fintan says. “There was already too much momentum and bad blood.”
Lilian regards Finn across the table like she wants to hate him, but can’t quite bring herself to.
He has that effect on people.
“Eventually, the humans began taking notice. Despite our best efforts—it was only a matter of time before one of them witnessed too much and exposed the secret of the entire hidden world of supernaturals. We knew the kind of persecution that would bring and couldn’t let that happen…not again.”
Grand-Mère taught me all about the witch-hunts that took place across Europe, the torturing and killing of our sisters that pushed them further and further out of society until they came overseas to the Americas.
There’s a reason supernaturals stick to the shadows of society—our survival depends on it.
Humans don’t take kindly to anything ‘other’.
That hasn’t changed in the last thousand years. I doubt it ever will.
Not in my lifetime, at least.
Lilian blinks, and whatever horrors she sees in her mind’s eye seem to clear. Her gaze flicks over me, Rune, and Fintan. “We tried to stay out of it, but eventually it became clear that something had to be done.”
“The unity ritual,” I say.
She shakes her head. “No. Not yet. At first, our goal wasn’t to end the war. All we knew was that something had to be done.”
“We? You mean you and Grand-Mère?”
“And Gisèle Caron. We were the three most powerful lineages of witches this city had seen: the Beauchamps, the Dumonts, and the Carons.”
I try to remember if Grand-Mère ever mentioned anyone by the name of Caron, but nothing comes to mind.
“Claudette, Gisèle, and I were inseparable. The three of us grew up together in Tremé. Our family homes were all on the same block and we trained together, forged our magic together, and got in trouble together. We were always raising some kind of hell around Tremé.”
I chuckle. “That sounds like my grandmother.”
“So, when things were bad, Claudette, Gisèle, and I recruited and deployed teams of witches to patrol sections of each district in the city.”
Sebastian huffs, the icy daggers he shoots at our host growing ever more intense. “Fucking witches. Always sticking their noses where they don’t belong.”
Lilian opens her mouth to respond, but I’m already accessing my magic, calling on Mother Gaia’s power and channeling the force of the ancient cypress through me to amp up my intentions.
“What you don’t understand is—” Sebastian’s rant ends as his body spasms, assaulted by the fury of a woman and enough electricity to drop him to the floor in a fit of spasms.
“Josie, don’t.” Rune’s whispered warning does nothing to lessen my enjoyment at seeing the mighty Bastard King taken to the floor.
CHAPTER FOUR
FINN
My gaze flicks from Josie to Sebastian in the grip of her spell and a rush of disappointment hits. “Don’t stoop to antics. You’re better than that. Like it or not, he’s part of our bond.”
She doesn’t like it.
It doesn’t take an empath to read her emotions on that one. Especially when he’s showing no respect for witches.
I grip her wrist, and she releases the spell. “The cypress trunk gave me more of a magic boost than I anticipated.”
But even when she closes off the connection, the aftershocks of the spell still have Sebastian twitching on the ground.
Dammit. She can’t go around weakening him in public. His reputation of being ruthless and invincible is what keeps other supernaturals from waging war in the French Quarter.
